Peregrine

"FIXED: Various crashes." Would one of these crashes been lock-ups while the blue bar is running? This has happened a few times since starting the American Campaign and constant saving with the long write to disc is getting a bit annoying.

Initial CMSF Iron mode the spotting rules when a unit was selected were all the time. A few patches in it was change so while you still needed to spot friendly units for C&C purposes in the orders phase all your units were visible no matter who you selected.

A graphics setting modifies the distance that trees disappear and re-appear when set to the nearby trunks option. This isn't specified and may work differently for different drivers but I noticed this when doing some frame rate tests. shift-{ and shift-} tinkers with this in-game from memory. Can't check right now as I don't have access. Oddly enough turning this option up (higher setting) results in the trees disappearing sooner and re-appearing later. So if you want foliage closer to the camera turn this graphics option down. I basically set my graphics setting to get the distance of trunks/foliage I want as I feel this is more important to the look of the game than the detail itself. It feels a little different between CMBN and CMRT but CMRT and CMBS basically felt the same. Haven't quantified it.

SPOILERS obviously. It was a little while ago and I can't remember perfectly what I did. I dropped a Heavy/Short mission on every spotted contact immediately with whatever the lighter calibre artillery was. I think there was 3 of the heavy artillery available. With one I dropped a maximum length linear smoke mission on the ridge line hoping to isolate the beach areas from the defenses further back. With the second I did the same but his one was due to start 5 minutes after the mission commenced hoping to have a thick smoke screen for a long portion at the start of the battle. I can't remember what I did with the third (if there was one). I either saved it for an unspotted targets or area fired it at a cluster of spotted targets. I committed the aircraft to areas at the back of the map and they were useless. I expected nothing and thought they might get clobbered but decided if I didn't call them then when would I call them. Everyone went at once and was surprised at how well the guys crossing spotted targets that survived the arty. I would recommend enter and exiting the water at slow speed. Not sure if in these situations it makes a difference but I did have bogs that turned into immobilisation on both sides. There wasn't a mass of opposition. I don't read all the forums regularly but after playing this one I was surprised there hasn't been a clamouring for landing craft for CMBN.

Electric zap a la Ghostbusters then move on.

List of units that can't call in off-board assets is probably shorter than those that can. Might be waiting a while for some of them though.

We go, Iron. Played the first scenario in real-time by accident because that is what it defaulted to and I didn't notice. I kid you not, at first I thought something was broken because the pause and fast forward buttons were gone ,then I realised it was real-time. It was fun to play though but for bigger battles it would be a bit of a pause fest or lose track of stuff. The movie is also too fun. I don't micromanage but I sometimes like watching the same thing from different angles. If real-time get some full playback in the future I would probably change.

This was a pretty comprehensive discussion on Iron v Elite. I had forgotten I had done this but it does have a description about how hiding can impact squads, particularly if they are spread out. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105181 In the command phase Iron and Elite are identical. This was not the case in CMSF and I have forgotten where it changed. I am not sure it ever made it to CMBN but the DESCRIPTION in the manual was incorrect. Voice contact is 50m unhidden, 20m if a unit is hidden. It is automatic as long as the distance is satisfied. I have forgotten all the exceptions but I think buttoned tanks and vehicles such as trucks and APCs cannot ever establish voice contact. Visual contact is a spotting chance under Iron. The chance degrades significantly with distance and terrain and hiding. Under Elite if you can draw LOS and within the range for close or distant visual it is automatic.

Hidden units also have the default voice in command of 50m reduced to 20m. Spotting should be harder for hidden units in iron mode but I am not sure if they will drop out of command if they are already in command by hiding.

Things like that happened with the install of CMRT when you edited the commands. What happened with those situations was that the underlying hotkeys.txt files somehow got corrupted during the install or the first edit did it. Battlefront never really explained why but this did occur for a few people. The solution was to clobber the hotkeys.txt file and start fresh. Editing in the GUI didn't seem to fix anything. I am not sure if the format of the CMRT and CMBN 3.0 hotkeys files are the same. I think they are as a quick inspection looked like they were identical except that the "Camera Keys FPS" and "Camera Keys RTS" group of commands are reversed in order between the files. If you have CMRT you could probably overwrite your CMBN hotkeys file with this then happily edit in the GUI. Your old CMBN hotkeys file should not work as there have been many additions. You should probably save the new CMBN hotkeys file first but in reality this is probably corrupted. If you open and look at it I suspect you will see the problems if you know what to look for. Actually stuff it, here is what my file looks like. The default directory is "install disk":\Program Files (x86)\Battlefront\Combat Mission Battle for Normandy\Data\hotkeys.txt. BE WARNED - mine is edited away from the default commands. I can't see why the below won't work for you. If your file does not look like this it is almost certainly corrupted. If you decide to copy mine dump it in notepad* as this will get rid of an special characters that the forum might have plopped in there. *Best program ever invented. The file contents start at the following // inclusive. // You can edit this file to modify various in-game functions and hot-key based commands. Use of special characters (shift, alt, control, numpad or function keys) is not permitted. The letter in <>'s (E,F or G) designates the language (English, French or German). Command Keys Direct //FAST <E>' //QUICK <E>; //MOVE <E>h //SLOW <E>g //HUNT <E>k //ASSAULT <E>l //REVERSE <E>t //BLAST <E> //MARK MINES <E> //TARGET <E>o //TARGET LIGHT <E>i //TARGET ARC <E>u //CLEAR TARGET <E> //FACE <E>j //TARGET SMOKE <E> //TARGET ARMOR ARC <E>M //TARGET BRIEFLY <E>, //DEPLOY WEAPON <E>/ //PAUSE <E>P //HIDE <E>y //DISMOUNT <E>[ //BAIL OUT <E> //OPEN UP <E>] //POP SMOKE <E>b //ACQUIRE <E> //SPLIT TEAMS <E> //ASSAULT TEAM <E> //ANTITANK TEAM <E> //SCOUT TEAM <E> //DRIVER TEAM <E> Camera Keys //MOVE FORWARD <E>W //MOVE LEFT <E>A //MOVE RIGHT <E>D //MOVE BACK <E>S //ROTATE LEFT <E>Q //ROTATE RIGHT <E>E //REVERSE DIRECTION <E>V //RAISE <E>R //LOWER <E>F //ZOOM OUT <E>Z //ZOOM IN <E>X //WIDE ANGLE <E>C Camera Keys FPS //MOVE FORWARD <E>W //MOVE LEFT <E>A //MOVE RIGHT <E>D //MOVE BACK <E>S //ROTATE LEFT <E>Q //ROTATE RIGHT <E>E //REVERSE DIRECTION <E>V //RAISE <E>R //LOWER <E>F //ZOOM OUT <E>Z //ZOOM IN <E>X //WIDE ANGLE <E>C Camera Keys RTS //MOVE FORWARD <E>W //MOVE LEFT <E>A //MOVE RIGHT <E>D //MOVE BACK <E>S //ROTATE LEFT <E>Q //ROTATE RIGHT <E>E //REVERSE DIRECTION <E>V //RAISE <E>R //LOWER <E>F //ZOOM OUT <E>Z //ZOOM IN <E>X //WIDE ANGLE <E>C Misc Keys //SELECT PREVIOUS UNIT <E>- //SELECT NEXT UNIT <E>= //3D MODEL QUALITY (-) <E>{ //3D MODEL QUALITY (+) <E>} //TALK TO INTERNET OPPONENT <E>`

This is a partial myth that is misunderstood. Just because you can't target the exact square doesn't mean you can't fire in a way that impacts them. Area firing in the general direction works just fine. I have done many tests and even area firing 25-40m in front of you (the limit of vision in the thicker forest) units 80-100m away are still impacted significantly as the bullets keep traveling much further than the square targeted. Didn't bother testing longer as it was pretty clear from the test that shooting 60m in front of a target still did the trick. It is frustrating not being able to directly target but area firing in the general direction works just fine. For me the real problem is the TAC AI won't behave like this at all.

Which is the whole point of my post. Something is now wrong with the third mission of a campaign that ships with the game.

You get the tiger back fully repaired next mission regardless. This is more for the scenario designer because part of the fun (point?) of this scenario is retrieving the tiger which now seems impossible. I have played the campaign previously so I know I get it back in mission 4. But can you imagine a new player getting excited about playing with the king tiger just to see it whacked. Then as they didn't retrieve it on outwards appearances it looks lost to the Kampfgruppe for subsequent missions.

Playing this campaign again and when I started the third mission (Tiger poaching) it looks like there are units near the tiger that have bazooka's that now shoot at it from the moment the scenario starts. Inevitably the tiger is immobilised before I get anywhere near it. Restarted the mission for the same result. It now looks impossible to even sprint to the tiger before it is wrecked yet alone fight you way there. I am assuming that there are units in the building that now feel happy about firing bazooka's from indoors.

Buddy aid is better as it is than no buddy aid at all. And as for picking up SMGs the problem is more to do with SMGs seeming to be too good compared to the other weapons. Squads without a single SMG are nowhere near as effective as a squad with a single SMG. Not sure if this is a problem with the game engine (a single guy firing a SMG is usually a lot more effective than 9 guys firing rifles) or more that the scenarios design rely on infantry getting kills with bullets as opposed to troops retreating under fire or getting killed by HE.

I didn't test it with elevation but in the editor on a billiard board in heavy forest two squads area firing 50m in the direction of one squad at 90m? (can't quite remember the exact range) gets suppression and casualties in the first turn.

That is not true. While you can only aim 40m - 50m in the heaviest of forest when you do this the bullets travel a lot further. I didn't bother testing the limits but shooting in the direction of the enemy does have effects out to 100m. Once you know roughly where an enemy is in the forest it is important to shoot and keep shooting, whether you can see the enemy them or not.

Moving slowly with pauses gives you a chance albeit a slim one not to get shot at first. I only move like that if I expect to get shot at. Even that is pretty rapid but time is important. I would have thought what I described is a pretty normal way to go through any sort of close terrain. This is why fighting in forests isn't great in CM. A lot of command to move a short distance and then some suspect AI behaviour at the end. But that said the commands don't matter too much as long as when you start fighting you starting shooting and don't stop. This is why area fire is important and much more effective than people realise. Even in dense terrain area firing the maximum distance 40m the bullets go a lot further and impact targets well beyond your visual range. And you guys won't stop shooting if the targets drop out of sight.

The reality is it takes a lot of commands to move through forest. Heaps if you are being careful. For me moving 120m would involve three 40m bounds (command then 3 mouse clicks) with a 20 second pause at each (click on waypoint with 4 pauses times three) for a total of 12 mouse clicks and 13 key presses. That is probably two turns worth of movement. And with the situation described in the original post one soldier is described as doing the incorrect thing. But assuming it is a ten man sqd you have: - one man down - one becoming a casualty to a bad TAC AI decision - eight doing nothing The eight doing nothing is the biggest divergence from reality. They should be shooting for all their worth. And the situation described in the original post is as close to ideal as you could want. You know fairly precisely where an enemy is, you have only had one casualty, the squad is not suppressed and they are still. Unless you are massively outmatched you are a target command and a mouse click away from winning a fight. A single critically important area target command at a critical moment isn't micromanagement when stacked against the amount of commands for that squad to perform the much more mundane task of getting to that position. At the 50m range described in the original post suppression would happen very quickly. Quite possibly in the first 10 seconds. And as the TAC AI doesn't area fire on suspicion in return you probably have a full minute before a sensible response (if you a playing a human) or no response if it is single player. The flaw in the original post doesn't have a lot to do with buddy aid, it is more the TAC AI lacking situational awareness and squads doing nothing when in fact they are in mortal danger. The squad that opened up originally to cause the casualty probably shouldn't have stopped shooting. You squad should have started shooting back. The Red Thunder forum had a discussion about fighting in forests. I have done tests and even in thick cover if you area fire in the general direction of an enemy it has a clear impact at 100m. And in pretty much every situation in forest combat area firing first with everything gets the best results. The movement commands (hunt, quick, assault) were largely irrelevant. Again I don't like micromanaging either but close combat in CM is about all about micromanagement and stomaching watching the TAC AI painfully for a minute sometimes.

The TAC AI won't do sensible things for you in close combat. If you have units that are unsuppressed enough to be doing buddy aid in a forest and there is an enemy 50m away then ordering them to area fire will give probably give you the best result in most situations. Different thread but I did some tests and firing like that and had good results to targets 100m away in the general direction of the fire. I am not saying that the micromanagement is good at all but the reality is with the TAC AI like it is close combat isn't great. If you are playing a scenario where you have significant numbers of units that will be in close combat then that scenario will be by it's nature a micromanagement fiesta. So while the situation you described is bad a single key press to hide or two presses to area fire isn't a significant amount of intervention to perform a critical action where the AI is clearly bad. Especially compared to the grinding task of moving troops through the forest in the first place.

An area target or a hide command for a unit taking casualties in close proximity to an enemy isn't exactly significant micromanagement.

If there is enemy close and you don't want to be performing buddy aid you should be area firing in the direction of the enemy. Regardless if you can target the exact square. Anything in the general direction is useful. Only anecdotal but I am convinced hiding does help. The graphic stills shows kneeling and the unit in question does spot as if kneeling. Only tonight I saw this happen and the LOS definitely changed as the hiding unit could see over a wall. But even though kneeling the unit wasn't targeted quickly. I suspect the act of hiding (or being the only visible person in the sqd) made the individual harder to spot.

Chance Encounter

The campaigns are great but for new players I would recommend playing more scenarios first to learn the game. When learning you can make some really big mistakes and this may mess up campaigns if you do not restart.